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No Slump For Sex Online
Despite the explosion of sexual activity online, a Zogby survey found that 65.l per cent of respondents believed finding sexual fulfillment on the Net was "not likely." Duh.
These robust figures show just how hypocritical and schizophrenic America's attitudes about sex and the Net are, and how much the success of online sex sites reveals about the future of the Web.
In a l999 CBS.MarketWatch.com poll, 23 per cent of the people surveyed called pornography the Net's worst feature. It's certainly all most politicians want to talk about when it comes to discussing the online world. But somebody isn't telling the truth. A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
The popularity of sex sites, especially during a so-called Tech Crash, ought to send a message about technology and applications that work online, or don't. Like Napster, sex sites offer genuine utility for millions of people who want sexual information and activity. Sex, like music and entertainment, is a universal human interest. Technology can make it easier for people to connect with these interests, and when that happens, the technology works. And the Net is rattling old taboos. Even though the number of people accessing sex sites has gone through the roof, the Cooper/Scherer report found that the proportion of sexual compulsives online parallels that in the general population. The hue and cry about the menace of cybersex addiction seems misplaced.
Law enforcement officials have also been reporting a dramatic rise in child pornography online, but there is no evidence that sex crimes are on the rise either, according to researchers and federal (including FBI) statistics. Is it possible that the availability of sexual material online gives people healthier and safer outlets for sexual impulses than were previously available?
The problem with the way media, politics, morality and the Net have gotten all tangled up is that the confusion makes it difficult to measure the real consequences of online sexuality, clearly a significant new social reality. The Net has, for the first time in contemporary history, given individuals the freedom to explore sex and sexuality, despite ferocious opposition to the idea from government, elected representatives, religous groups and much of media. Tens of millions of people can access sex sites, talk about sexual fantasy and practice, consider whether they're gay or straight, meet one another, indulge in fantasies, gather information, assume different identities. According to the Cooper/Scherer report, 87 per cent of sex- site users said they felt no shame or guilt. More than 60 per cent pretended to be a different age than they actually are; 14 per cent admitted that they made up other attributes; another five per cent assumed the opposite gender.
Some interesting conclusions emerge from all of this. Simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive as many politicians, moralists, educators and others would claim, as they pass legislation requiring blocking and filtering. Nor do the clucking or the legislation seem to have much effect. Even while Congress passes profoundly stupid laws like the Children's Internet Protection Act -- which forces local schools and libraries to install filtering programs whether they want to or not in order to get federal aid -- the number of adult Americans accessing sites devoted to sex seems to be growing by the day.
Another pattern that's been developing over several years is also becoming more distinct: The Net works well as a corollary to non-virtual human behavior and activity, not as a subsitute. Messaging doesn't replace voice-to-voice communications like phones; free music doesn't stop people from buying CD's (which sold in record numbers last year); e-books aren't more attractive to most readers than the real thing. And sex sites and virtual sexual identities don't replace real sex.
It has been shown that while the number of porn sites is exploding, the "appetite" of browsers is not matching that explosion. The supply and demand balance is shifting towards too much supply. While a couple years ago it would have been easy to make a lot of money with porn on the web, that is no longer true today. Name a fetish, any fetish, and you will find dozens or hundreds of sites catering to you, for free. The porn kings are "pushing" the product, but there is only so much "pulling" (heh) that we can do.
It's not fair to say that ``sex sells'' to all humans. And it's not fair to say that the ``human libido'' continues. And I don't mean this in a trivial way in the sense that I can find an eighty year old grandmother who isn't interested in sex on-line or getting laid. Rather, there are entire cultures where the adults go years without having sex because they see sex only as a means of procreating. So they only have sex when they want a child. People are fond of saying ``all men masturbate and most women too;'' according to the anthropologists who have studied the above mentioned culture, that is probably not the case. In fact, probably none of them ever masturbate.
My point is this: so many people are fond of saying things like ``human nature'' and ``human desire'' and try to apply some claim to humans universally. But often when people make claims like this they are very far from the truth. For example, there is a culture where it is accepted, no expected, that a boy suck his fathers penis and swallow its load. It is part of the boy's passage to manhood. The idea is that by accepting an important part of what it means to be a man from another man he is gaining that mans intelligence and power. So it's not fair to say that ``human nature rejects the idea of sex with children.'' Or another relavent example is the one I have given above. Or cannibals give another example. Or entire socities that are vegetarian; so it's not fair to say ``it is human nature to eat meat'' or ``we are carnivores by nature'' when there are groups of thousands of people showing that to be false.
Our sexual desires and our nature is dictated almost entirely by our own culture. Our attitudes towards sex, drugs, food, personal space, hygeine, alcohol, education and so on are different than almost all other cultures. When it comes to human nature, there are almost no absolutes, almost no universals and almost surely large sets of counterexamples to every sentence of the form ``it is human nature to do X.''
So here is how I would change what you said:
Well, yes, it DOES appear that Katz is right on this occasion. The only problem is that his conclusion is painfully obvious when applied to our society. Sex sells to most Americans. It almost always has, and it almost always will. Through good times and bad, Americans will almost always want to get laid.
I work in the online porn industry myself, and would say the view from the trenches are different than those reported.
The metric used, counting the number of free sites and pay sites over two time samples, is almost completely unrelated to the the success or profitability of the industry. Unlike many non-porn dot coms, porn has historically been very protiable, but the profits per subscriber and per "amount of work" (nebulous, I know) are generally decreasing.
If you look at publicly traded companies that own or run porn pay sites, they've been hit as hard as the rest of the tech sector. New Frontier Media (NASDAQ: NOOF) which runs iGallery.net (which in turn runs tits.com , pussy.com, etc.) went from $12 a share in April 2000 to around $2 a share today. Private Media (NASDAQ: PRVT), a major European porn publishing company which runs its own sites as well as has licensing deals with US net companies, went from $12.5 a share in April 2000 to around $6 a share today. Rick's Cabaret (NASDAQ: RICK), a Texas-based strip club company that runs several large sites, went from $5.50 a share in April to $2.25 a share today.
More intangible measures, such as profits per surfer signup, also seem to be falling. Exact figures aren't published, but some major companies are reducing their "referral fees" paid for advertising the sites. Cyberotica , the 1st or 2nd most visited for-pay porn site most months according to now-defunct PCDataOnline.com, has dropped their referral fees from $40 to $25 per "free signup" since last year. Smaller companies are following suit, and larger ones that are holding the line for competitive reasons are showing signs of financial strain. RJB Telcom, which runs the other top-visited pay site, Karas's Adult Playhouse , has held their referral fees at $35-$42 per subscriber, but has been a couple weeks late paying affiliates for several months. (Their difficulties initially stemmed from an expensive legal entanglement last November, but if they were as profitable as a year or two ago, they almost assuredly would have recovered almost instantly). Both companies are very well run, and grew from profits rather than IPOs...the publicly traded companies haven't shown any outward signs of profit problems, but their management is typically not as sensitive as the successful private firms in responding to market changes.
The boom in free porn sites, which Katz cites as a sign that the industry is doing well, may actually be the opposite, at least economically: the abundance of free porn is widely thought to be eroding the demand for pay sites, though there are too many factors at play to prove a causal relationship. For those who don't know the business model, free sites exist by running ads for pay sites, so the success of the two are intertwined. One thing most of the industry agrees on is that it's harder to make money in porn lately, whether from free sites or pay sites, and based on the few publicly traded companies dealing in online porn, investors are seeing the same thing.
Wired News also reported about a month ago on the Wireless Porn industry -- photos being sent down to a wireless PDA or Cell Phone, and therefore being a tremendous cash cow. Quite intresting how appealing to the basic human nature works.
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WolfSkunks for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.keenspace.com";
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
There certainly is some real child porn out there. But the way law enforcement officials define child porn is pretty broad. They say if you do not have files on hand documenting the ages of each model depicted in a film or still photo, they are assumed under 18. So, we are not just talking about pictures which depict what appears to be a 9 or 10 year old child performing oral sex. You must also include nude photos of nubile 19 year old college girls who could pass for 16 or 17. Both of these are painted with the same broad brush. So, when I hear about some guy getting busted because child porn has been found on his hard drive, I wonder whether he had real child porn or the trumped up variety.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Impossible to use the internet for sexual ends you say? Try http://www.m4m4sex.com/. If you happen to be a gay male looking for some action, you couldn't pick something more efficient.
The site works well in heavily gay cities, such as San Francisco and Miami, but it works just as well in areas where being gay is practically a crime.
Perhaps Jon Katz should write an article about this site specifically. The members in Milan have continually expressed how helpful this site is for their lifestyle when they live in a country that is dominated by the Roman Catholic Church. I can't wait until they open up Rome.
Of course, I'm biased because I developed most of the site for them but it seems relevant here.
we have come to think that awful pisswater like Miller is what beer is supposed to taste like.
Why do you think Budwieser have those huge horses? Me thinks it's not a coincidence that Bud taste like piss.
somebody made a non-alchohol beer that tasted the same Guiness, I would drink it all day, every day.
Amen brother. "Honestly Boss, it's non-alcoholic Guinnes...hic...Guinness"
Sure, but we are one of the only species that can have sex at any point in the female's menstrual cycle (except that really yecchy part.)
See...sex hang ups. The yecchy part? So what - wear a condom, wash up after. Big deal. Plus for some women the release helps them relax and makes the cramping a little more bearable.
Besides - Unless it's a gushing heavy flow, it's not that messy plus it's pre-lubed.
The misleading assumption here is that each "site" represents a company that has set up shop to sell pornography online, much like Amazon.com is a "site."
In reality, a single pornographer is liable to have hundreds of sites under its "umbrella." I know a guy who used to run DNS for a Web pornographer, and he was regularly called upon to register or alter DNS info for hundreds of domain names every day.
Statistics like these prove there are a lot of porn sites out there, true. But they don't actually say anything about the health of the online pornography industry per se.
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Breakfast served all day!
Even light-hearted comedies like The Marx Brothers (specifically, Horsefeathers) had Speakeasies, active drinking by all characters, deception of quality (the same large jug was used to fill a bottle of "Scotch" and a bottle of "Rum" (by Chico)), theft of alcohol in large quantity for smuggling to others later (by Harpo), etc...of course, I could be misinterpretting Horsefeathers as a light-hearted comedy; it might have been seen as a very controversial film for the time...
Hollywood basically continued to act likes its promotion of alcohol was not only harmless, but like it was Hollywood's God-Given Right to promote alcohol.
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
b.t.w., these are opinions/observations of the actions of the Movie and TV entertainment industry, and not condemnations of alcohol consumption or sexual activity itself.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Check both your links, and find that the first contradicts what you say about the second - alcohol consumption prior to 1840 was more than double (nearly treble) what it is today.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Sadly, sex is always lucrative and shameful.
IIRC, pornography makes more money than Hollywood, yet while 9 out of 10 people will admit to see a movie, only 1 out of 10 will admit to watching pornography.
I see two conclusions.
1) Americans are ashamed of sex.
2) Pornography enthusiasts spend lots and lots of money on porn.
Wow, what a simple viewpoint.
First, define "drunkeness". What do you mean? The 13 day moving average of my blood alcohol content? Perhaps you mean the amount of alcohol consumed?
Check out this link and you'll see that beer consumption did go down, but the hard liquor consumption was unaffected.
Check out this link and you'll see that consumption has far exceeded in the years after prohibition any level seen before prohibition. Do you still think we're on the fast track to the level of drunkeness only seen in Russia (ha ha)?
Sorry to interrupt this discussion with some FACTS. I know that sort of behavior is considered rude by some.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
look at how they got the numbers -- I don't know about this particular study, but an anonymous poll that goes
1. do you or have you ever enjoyed an adult internet site?
_Y _N
2. Did you, have you, or will you ever tell anyone about this?
_Y _N
many people will say things anonymously who won't say them when they can be traced back to them. Anonymous cowards on slashdot are a clear example of this. Sometimes they even say accurate, useful, interesting things.
Pr0n is a big time money maker. It doesn't cost much to produce, and on the internet the distribution costs are low too, there is a huge demand for it, even though a lot of people don't like to admit it. Even the heavily religious and a lot of women, who are the most publically critical of pr0n are often closet pr0n consumers. The internet is a great outlet for pr0n, especially for the bashful pr0n consumer because people can view it more or less in 'the privacy of their homes' without having to visit some seedy adult book store, receive unusual packages in the mail or confront a cashier at a convenience store who is hostile to a purchase of Hustler magazine or whatnot. Of course as we all know there is not really much true privacy, especially on the internet, but to a certain extent there is strength in numbers, and there are so many pr0n sites and so many people visiting them that it is hard to single an individual out from that.
If you have his numbers, please give Katz back his 1 key so he can stop using the letter 'l' as a substitute for it when he uses a date.
BilldaCat
If that's your opinion then fine.
The opinion of law enforement over here (which, as a computer guy, seems sensible) is that it may not always be possible to gather that form of evidence as the one can't be distinguished from the other.
I'm happy with this situation.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
UK Law (which strikes me as sensible) says that anything which is or appears to be child porn is illegal. Why?
Simple. If the fake is legal, it's almost impossible to prosecute the real thing as the instant defence becomes 'it's faked'. How do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't? You can't, in all honesty.
If you want to keep the real thing illegal and prosecutable, the fake has to be illegal too. A free speech advocate is almost certainly going to jump up and down on this, but this is the sort of thing which makes me GLAD Britain doesn't have absolute freedom of speech. It creates far too many problems and undesirable situations. For reference, I'm a Liberal Democrat. Slightly left of centre, basically.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
He cites a report from sextracker.com that the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
Notice the survey is up to last year. If you track the dotcom boom up until last year, you'll still find tremedous growth. It's the beginning of last summer until now has the market been crashing down so quickly.
All your other dated surveys were made before the dotcom crash. How do you know if the sex online industry isn't slumping now? What if all those horny guys paying the sex sites were the ones downloading porn at work, and now they that they're fired they don't have the bandwidth to stream video from hotnakedteenagechickz.com?
Katz, this has to be the most misleading mixture of statistics I've ever seen. There may be some support for your point, you may even be right, but your quotes of random statistics prove absolutely nothing.
the number of free adult Web sites grew from 22,100 in l997 to 280,300 last year. Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
And just what constitutes a Web site? Is it one nudie picture or a whole multimedia adventure? The sex industry uses 'free sites' as a lure to take you to there pay site. Many of these pay sites are just a sub-section of a larger one. These numbers mean nothing.
Despite the explosion of sexual activity online, a Zogby survey found that 65.l per cent of respondents believed finding sexual fulfillment on the Net was "not likely." Duh.
Define 'sexual fulfillment', please. Hell, just define 'fulfillment'. 68 percent of the people I survey believe sexual fulfillment only occurs in a lasting, trusting relationship. That's sort of hard to find on the 'Fuck My Ass Hard' web site.
These robust figures show just how hypocritical and schizophrenic America's attitudes about sex and the Net are, and how much the success of online sex sites reveals about the future of the Web.
How do two unrelated, meaningless numbers reveal anything.
In a l999 CBS.MarketWatch.com poll, 23 per cent of the people surveyed called pornography the Net's worst feature. It's certainly all most politicians want to talk about when it comes to discussing the online world. But somebody isn't telling the truth.
Try cruising for some porn for a while. No other category of sites has as many pop-up banners (except maybe MP3 sites). I would call porn sites the Net's worst feature.
A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
And here is the worst lie of all. Just because the vast majority of people cruising for porn don't tell anyone, you imply that everyone is doing it. If 4 out of 100 cruise for sex, 3 won't tell anyone, 68 will think there is nothing to be gained by it and 23 will think it's disgusting. Your numbers add up perfectly Katz, but they don't mean anything, and they definitely doesn't imply that people are lying, hypocritical, or schizophrenic.
The popularity of sex sites, especially during a so-called Tech Crash, ought to send a message about technology and applications that work online, or don't. Like Napster, sex sites offer genuine utility for millions of people who want sexual information and activity. Sex, like music and entertainment, is a universal human interest. Technology can make it easier for people to connect with these interests, and when that happens, the technology works. And the Net is rattling old taboos.
Or maybe the net is offering those who would break the taboos anyway a chance to do it without suffering the social stigma. Every culture has activities and views that it finds acceptable and taboo. People who follow the social structure are accepted, those who choose to break the taboos choose not to be part of that social structure. All the Net does is provide people with enough privacy to walk in two worlds at once.
According to the Cooper/Scherer report, 87 per cent of sex- site users said they felt no shame or guilt.
I'm willing to bet that this correlates well with Napster users. Maybe the revolution of the net is that it allows people to break social taboos without incurring the social punishment (the only thing that really keeps the number of murders down).
More than 60 per cent pretended to be a different age than they actually are; 14 per cent admitted that they made up other attributes; another five per cent assumed the opposite gender.
Only 14 percent. My survey shows that every male in every chat room has a 12in wanger, yet a recent study by a condom company (see today's bbspot) says the average length is 5.6in. My conclusion is that the net has a special attraction for people with big wangers. All the 45 year old men are either 18yr old females (36DD, BTW), or 22 yr old, independantly wealthy playboys. Remember, on the Net no one knows that you're a dog.
Really, Katz. Is this the best you can do?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Jon Katz appears to have fallen off of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down.
Let's talk about online pornography. As a dad trying to keep his kids from seeing it. The web makes pornography extraordinarily difficult to hide from my kids. When I was a kid in the late seventies, there was no such thing as 'online pornography'. If I wanted to see it I had to go to my best friends house and look through his Dad's closet. I would never have seen the world wide host of stuff appearing a click away on the web.
As a society we've gone from having to sneak to look at the stuff to not being able to buy it in stores but being able to look at things people should never see in the privacy of our own homes.
The problem as I see it is that a mild dose of the stuff can help answer questions for children that they couldn't get answers to any other way. A major dose of the stuff leads naive young minds to believe things about members of the opposite set that are most certainly not true.
On line sex sites almost never go to the tame and ordinary, they strive for the bizzare and extraordinary and in the process they take countless young minds with them. How plain real life must seem to budding youth when it is compared to some online pornography.
On the other hand and to a different subject, there is no amount of child pornography that is healthy for any society. To permit it with enthusiasm is to guarantee that most children who are abused by it are to be left behind to deteriate. Maybe they will grow up to be exceptionally screwed up adults. Maybe they will abuse their own children. Maybe they will end up on "Love Line" with Dr. Drew talking about what their parents did to them and wondering why they can't form a relationship.
Beware the wood elf!!!
The resolution of a modern cellphone display must be on par with the old C=64 and Apple ][ stuff, why should pictures of naked people be any less popular in that medium?
From what I understand, a large porportion of the child porn being found is endless reposts of the same pictures, made back when it was legal in places like Denmark. While that is still obviously not acceptable, it's much better than if it was new.
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Well, I think that's probably more in keeping with what the pron industry does, but in fact sexuality in films was really quite open in early Hollywood - until the decency schoolmarms, fresh out of the job of persecuting consumers of alchohol - turned to a much easier target. Hollywood.
But more to the point - so what? I'm sure there are a lot of very sheltered people and ostrich-like parents screaming about American Pie in the terms you use. My uncle wouldn't let my cousin watch the Breakfast Club because it was "permissive," whatever that means (it's the moralistic equivalent of "inappropriate" - it means, Humpty-Dumpty-in-Wonderland style, whatever the speaker wants it to mean).
But I don't think that American Pie was a success (after the first weekend) because a kid boned a pie; the movie was a relatively fresh and honest portrayal of the confusion, yearning, and emotional turmoil that accompanies peoples' first sexual experiences. Portraying a subject is not the same as glorifying it, as you seem to imply.
Frankly, I think this was the most coherent Katz article I've seen. Those wailing or crowing about "the death of content" would do well to look at the things that are succeeding without judging them or moralizing if they are to understand what forms of entertainment DO work online.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Actually, IIRC, this is an old typist trick (someone correct me if I am wrong):
1997 has to be typed with both hands, while l997 can be typed with one, which may be faster in certain cases (not that it is a good thing on the net)...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
...online brokerages and selling pr0n.
Both of them are low setup costs, provide a service people want in the privacy of their homes and are addictive once you realize how easy it is.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
They must mean they don't tell anyone but Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer.
Not necessarly. It could mean that they surveyed people at the Centre to find out what percentage downloaded porn, and got numbers that were 75% beneath the anticipated results (found by examining other surveys or surveying spouses or whatnot).
There are even experiments you can do in which you convince the participants that you already have the information, and you're just seeing if they'll be honest about it. These kinds of experiments sound outlandish but actually seem to work quite well (they've been used to determine that racism and sexism still exist, even though talking about either one except in humor is becoming taboo).
Daniel
Take a look at the stock of I Village (IVIL) or Women.com (WOMN) and tell me they are booming.
IVIL today: $0.50/share 52-week high: $16/share
WOMN today: $0.15625/share 52-week high: $8.25/share
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Statistics? Facts? Where's the soapboxing about how the geek culture is unappreciated? Dammit, there's nothing here for me to get worked up about.
Now I have to rant about having nothing to rant about.
have sex at any point in the female's menstrual cycle (except that really yecchy part.)
*ahem* Some folks like the yecchy part, too...
"Smear'd with gumms of glutenous heat, I touch..." - Comus, John Milton
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
How do you prove beyond reasonable doubt that it isn't? You can't, in all honesty.
How about actually finding the abused child? If the picture is real, then the cops have photographs of the victim while the crime was being committed, which is more than they have to go on for most other crimes. Yeah, it means they may have to do a bit more work, but convenience for law enforcement is not an excuse to suppress freedom. It's that kind of thinking that gave us Carnivore and you guys the RIP bill.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Maybe the pay-for-sex are really rent-a-chick sites. Have you tought at this ? :)
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1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
The pornography industry has been a tech pioneer. I worked on a rather lame porn site in '95 that utilized realm authentication, used databases, tracked user 'preferences'; All cutting edge for the time. It was also of the first to implement the perl packages from (now failed) CyberCash. The porn industry was also first to make use of push-gifs, streaming media, and advanced features of DVDs, now all common place. Looking forward I'm sure pornographers will be first with the revolution going on in 3-d technology and the new generation of cameras.
Sex, or porn, might be the lowest common denomiinated message - the easiest content when content is a void. As Marshall MacCluan opined, as the medium expands, the message moves closer to it's lowest common denomintor -- which I would say is porn. I think we can witness small examples of this on cable TV -- the more channels we get, the more insepid the programming gets.
And on the web, the more URLs, the more porn. It's MacLuen's premis in action.
-z
It's simple: parents and teachers are two-faced lying hypocrites. They want you to feel badly about anything they can't control, your sex drive being one of those things. They mask their "concern" for you with paranoid fears about disease and pregnancy, (both of which can be avoided with safe sex and education). It changes when you're 21 because (too bad for them) you suddenly have just a few new rights and freedoms (not to mention money to spend...). But if you get married, then it's your turn to start living the lie that your parents lived! Luckily most 20-somethings I know grew up with much healthier attitudes, and if mom, dad, and every damn prude out there doesn't like it, well they can go screw themselves!
I see a lot of people in these comments questioning those numbers put forth by the researchers for one reason or another. I'd like to say that I think those numbers aren't far off at all.
I work in a small town ISP in middle American right in the center of the Bible Belt. It's a pretty religious place being 98% christian (conservative guess), and we have more churches than grocery stores here.
A few months ago I ran a transparent web proxy on some of our lines to guage whether it would do us much good. While tuning the cache I noticed is that there is a -whole- lot of porn browsing going on. (No I didn't match any of that up to user info, I respect privacy as much as possible).
Out of curiosity I wrote a simple script to comb the cache and see what percentage of URLs were porn related, I made a list of obvious things to search for like 'breast, pussy, hotchicks.com' etc. etc. Not scientific by any means but it gave me a decent ballpark. At 10pm at night I was getting percentages in the 35-40 range, quite a bit more than I expected.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Just as Hollywood today thinks its a God-Given Right to promote sexual promiscuity and open-activity...
Being an atheist, I can't vouch for whatever rights a god might grant to Hollywood. However, first amendment free speech restrictions do give anybody, including Hollywood, the right to talk about whatever the hell they want to.
It's the advent of censorship, ratings etc. that has more or less gagged Hollywood from showing more explicit or disturbing material. To the point where some people actually believe that Hollywood does *not* have the right to make movies with any content they wish, which is undoubtedly the intent of the censorship.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
It was said: "Law enforcement officials have also been reporting a dramatic rise in child pornography online, but there is no evidence that sex crimes are on the rise either, according to researchers and federal (including FBI) statistics. Is it possible that the availability of sexual material online gives people healthier and safer outlets for sexual impulses than were previously available?" Hmmm, I think you're missing the point. Its not a "healthier and safer outlet" if some children are still be expoited to make the child pornography... get a clue.
To boil it down: A lot of people asked why I was looking at cache files and accused me of being unethical by snooping around. Honestly I don't remember the specific reason I was looking at cache files (this incident happened several years ago) most likely had to do with me being much more clueless at the time. My friend was standing looking at the screen watching what I was doing and saw the cookies and files from the porn sites herself so I didn't point them out to her and say "look what your husband is doing!" She asked me how they got there and I simply told her that someone had to have visiting those sites.
It is true: directly this is not the fault of pornography, its the fact that her husband was lying to her, but I believe that if there was less access to such a thing that there might have been less of a problem
Also as far as statistic showing that porn effects long-term relationships, this is true, I don't have them infront of me and I'm not sure where they are on the net but I promise I have seen them.
Finally I don't pretend to be a sex theripist or try to dictate how people should act about sex or how people should live their lives, I'm pointing out that there is evidence that says maybe there are good reasons to choose to stay away from it.
As a side note I have been to Europe and just because sex is more prevelent doesn't make it any better
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
Some interesting conclusions emerge from all of this. Simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive as many politicians, moralists, educators and others would claim, as they pass legislation requiring blocking and filtering.
First of all I want to say that I am all for free-speech and free-press. I don't believe that library computers should have censorware placed on them mostly because I don't think that it works and I don't want to be blocked from legitimate websites. The problem with this statement is that it paints all politicians, moralists, educators in a light of being completely conservative, stupid and incapable of understanding the real issue. Some of them don't, this is true, but to generalize all of them this way is unfair. I think there are real issues that should be addressed and are over-looked by both extreme conservative parties, and extreme liberal parties.
I would most likely be considered by this audience to be a "religious" person. But I'm not going to sit here and spout off that God said sex was bad and therefore we shouldn't look at porn, that's not the point (and besides God never said that, just an idea that is put forth by people who haven't actually read the Bible). The point is that contrary to Mr. Katz statement above, people who engage in sexual activity, be it porn (internet or elsewhere), or one-night stands, whatever, have less fulfiling long-term relationships. And I know there will be people who don't much care for long term relationships in the first place but it is proven statistically that people in long term relationships, especially marriage relationships are happier and lead more fulfiled lives.
There are more victims of porn than first meets the eye. First the people being photoed, erotic dancers, whatever, a lot of times they do these things willingly but because they feel they have no other way to make money. Of course there is the child argument which goes without saying. But I personally think what is most over-looked is partners/spouses of people looking at porn. About a year ago a married friend of mine asked me to come look at her computer (some problem with the Internet settings) in the course of working on it I discovered cookies and cached files from porn sites that her husband had been surfing. She was devistated. She felt like she wasn't good enough, that her husband didn't love her for who she is. In essence that women is a victim. I certainly would be upset if it was my girlfriend looking at these things, and I know she'd break up with me if she thought that I was. The victims can be the people we care about.
Finally we victimize ourselves. By looking at porn we buy into an unrealistic fantansy of strange women who show up out of nowhere and have sex with us. Come-on! That doesn't really happen, and we start evaluating people by those ideas.
Pornography turns people into objects of sex. Maybe I have high ideals but I believe that people should be judged as people. I know its rare but maybe its time as a society we change. Freedom shouldn't come at the expense of other's Freedom.
Flame away! :)
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
So, you want me to believe there are 200 free sites for every commercial sex site. This must be some new definition of free that I am not aware of...
In Murphy We Turst
How about actually finding the abused child?
Good point. Having a victim to testify against the person who *took* the picture, for that crime, is a good idea.
However, I believe possession and distribution are also crimes. These criminals may not even know who the kid is, or if the photo is real or not. In these cases, it is important to follow intent. As long as it is a crime to possess or distribute kiddie porn, it doesn't matter if the material is real or fake. What matters is that it is intended to pass as real.
Freedom of speech only goes so far. You cannot shout 'Fire' in a crowded theater, because people might get hurt. Likewise, you cannot fake kiddie porn and claim it's acceptible if for no other reason than it will create a market for less technical perverts to pass their real kiddie porn as fake, because kids will get hurt.
--
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Then how did the report find out?!?! I bet they were all going through the MS Passport Service. ;^)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
This article on working for porn sites was on http://freshmeat.net a while back.
It's really interesting (and no, it's not a dirty story). It's about how porn sites have to be coded really well to cope with high loads, including tons of images, and with very high reliability since they are pay sites.
Do you grok? Maybe you can work for the porn industry!
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
Well, out of every 100 men they asked, 75 said they didn't enjoy online porn. Ergo, 75% of men are liars. :-)
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
This is a good point, that bears some further discussion. Throughout history, whenever a new media is developed, someone immediately finds a way to use that media to deliver pornographic content. Here are some:
Photos
Daguerreotypes
Stereoscopes
Postcards
I'd say that people's desire for pornography has driven many technologies. Many people credit the adult industry with the rapid development of VCRs and portable video cameras. What do you think the number one use of Polaroid cameras is? Hint: It's not taking pictures for the bullettin board at work. Bottom line? Porn sells. Always has, and always will. I'd even be willing to bet that the race to create a good Virtual Reality program to perform complex, life-saving surgeries is being run with just slightly less vigor than the race to create a Virtual Reality program to give blow jobs.
Just wait until you (or some of you) goto a college that accepts people from all over the world. You don't realize how open other cultures are to sex until you start mixing into a group of people from other countries. I'm from the US and when I first went to college I was kinda suprised as to how open so many people from other countries were about sex. Most people from other countries would willingly talk about sex out in the open on the campus while Americans would shy away from and walk around these groups of people to avoid the conversation.
Another thing I don't understand. Why is sex considered such a bad thing that everyone wants you to avoid? But then when you hit 21, sex is suddenly a great thing you should be doing. It's like telling kids 2+2=4, then when they turn 21 2+2 really equals 6.
I'm posting this again as a non-AC
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
How do you feel about that?
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
Disgusting in what way?
"
The problem with that logic is that pedophiles will always want more. (That's the nature of addiction).
"
Surely this doesn't follow?
Pedophiles are no more addicted to sex than homosexuals, hetero-sexuals, bi-sexuals, catholics, mormons and linux developers.
The problem here is you've equated :
Someone who finds children sexually exciting = additcted child pornographer = regular child rapist = satan
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Katz, all I want to know is wether or not you allow your kid to access sexual imagery/porn online?? I mean, simple exposure to sexual imagery doesn't appear as harmful or destructive.... right?
This is another view of the world.
...subcultures online are booming -- auctions, women's communities, gaming, Open Source, entertainment, p2p...
I love how you go from P2P sucks to p2p being a booming subculture.... All within one day!
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
The reason it was repealed was not that it did not work, but that illegal booze became a high-profit product for organized crime (much like cocaine is today).
There's no question that cocaine use would be higher if it was legal. You can make a case for legalizing it for a variety of reasons, but to imply that outlawing a drug is going to make it more popular is just silly. If that was true, then alchohol and tobbacco would be the least popular drugs in America, because they are legal... In fact the opposite is true, they are far more popular than the banned ones.
Ever since prohibition, our culture has been one which, for the most part, insists on "responsible" drinking. (The typical college campus being an obvious exception for the last 20 years or so.) Contrast alchohol consuption in America with most European countries, and you will see that we are still relatively dry.
That reminds me of the time I was drinking with some stangers from Finland. When I was about ready to call it a day, they insisted on buying me another round. One of them said to me, "in Finland we say: If you drink, and you don't get drunk, it's wasted."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Very well. Drunkeness - The state of being heavilly intoxicated.
Total consumption over the course of the year does not mean much as an indicator. Somebody who drinks 2 glasses of wine with dinner every evening drinks more in a year than somebody who binge-drinks every Friday, but the regular wine-drinker is living a more healthy lifestyle, and far less likely to cause a major car accident, isn't he?
Even accepting your numbers, according to your second link, drinking was at its absolute LOWEST during prohibition... If the goal of prohibition was for people to drink less, that would be an indication that prohibition was working.
Thank you for your facts, but they seemed to lend more to support my argument than yours.
Also, yes... We are once again on the fast track to being a nation of alcholics. A good indication is the steady rise of alcholism among young drinkers. Binge-drinking on college campusses has been rising at an astonishing rate for quite some time now.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Correction: People don't drink crap like Budweiser and Old Milwaukee for the taste, but to get intoxicated.
There are a lot of people drinking beer specifically for the taste, as evidenced by the rising popularity of microbreweries and imported beer in America.
Here in America, we are a little behind the rest of the world in discovering that beer is supposed to taste good. We've been drinking horrible beer for so long, that we have come to think that awful pisswater like Miller is what beer is supposed to taste like.
The alchohol is part of the flavor and texture of the drink. If somebody made a non-alchohol beer that tasted the same Guiness, I would drink it all day, every day.
Coffee on the other hand... I drink that mostly for the fix. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You are in such a rush to get your hackles up against a perceived enemy, that it does not even occur to you that I might in fact favor looser restrictions. I'm merely pointing out that the argument that decriminalization will reduce use is not really supported by the facts.
Why am I concerned that binge-drinking is on the rise among the young? Because, as Charlie Chaplin pointed out, the thing about young people is they grow up to be adults. A trend among young adults, if it continues, becomes a trend of the general population.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
The thing I like most about this, is that it gives America some perspective on where they stand in relation to the rest of the world.
We all know, due to the birth rate, that at any given second, lots of people around the world are having sex. Even in the United States where pornography is looked down upon, folks are getting it on. Even here in Utah, where sex is *almost* as bad as taking a drink, babies are popping up everywhere. So its obvious, there is a whole lot of lovin' going on.
However, in many countries, this sexual activity is in the open: it is discussed, and it is celebrated. These people recognize that we are one of only two species on Earth that have sex for enjoyment, and they aim to get the most out of sex, as long as the innocent are not getting damaged by it.
But of course, here in the good 'ol US of A, we revert to our puritan values, and look down on anyone that openly exposes sexuality. The whole attitude of the United States can be summed up in the words of Helen Lovejoy dicussing the statue of David (from the Simpsons for the uninformed):
"It depicts body parts that, pratical as they are, are evil".
In other words, we know that sex is required for the survival of the species, but it shouldn't be enjoyed.
So we come to the Internet, which brings the whole world out in the open, and, hey, lookie there -- there is a whole lotta sex out there. To the rest of the world, this is normal and expected, but to Americans this is an "explosion of evil". Sorry, Mrs. Lovejoy - there is no sudden infusion of pornography in the world, it has always existed, and it always will.... you have just had your eyes closed for the last 200 years.
Do you have Linux and a DotPal? Click here now!
Would it be a place where technology posts got moderated down as a "troll"?
Probably would get a bunch of hits ...
;-)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Who would have guessed...
To be serious, sex sites never participated in the NASDAQ's irrational exuberance and it is not at all surprising that they are not affected by the market dive. Sex sites don't need investors because they are already cash cows.
If you think about it, sex sites and fancy business ideas like priceline and co have something in common at a root of their business plan. They both market the costumer's own desire back to him in a shiny wrap. They "add value" to our desires. The difference is that sex sites succeed because they have a grip on the end customer's desire, whereas most dot coms figured out that you could make a kill out of investors' desires and fantasies and never have to deal with real customers. To bad it will end soon. There is little in life more asthetically pleasing then watchig a fool and his money part.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
On the other hand the idea that Christianity never viewed sex as evil is ludicrous. You're either a flamebait or a complete ignorant. Why don't you read St. Pauls letters in the Bible for a more serious engagement with official Christian doctrine?
-- look, cheese ahoy!
With two sex articles on the front page and another at the beginning of the week, maybe it's time to join our friends at Plastic and create a new Slashdot topic?
sulli
RTFJ.
I remember hearing some horror stories from college where some guys I knew dated the same young lady one after the other. Sharing was okay, it seemed, as long as you included the source code.
Don't even get me started about "groupware."
I need to take a shower. Now I feel all slimy.
Where were you during the '70s, man??? Have you never heard of the "sexual revolution"?? (Not that I was there, but at least I've heard tales.)
The Net is revolutionary in many ways, but people explored sexuality with freedom, and often with anonymity, long before the word "personal computer" ceased to be an oxymoron. Let's acknowledge the revolutionary nature of the Internet, but let's not exaggerate it ad absurdium.
Sex-for-pay sites grew from 230 to 1,100 during the same period.
:P
...he visited each one in the name of "journalistic integrity".
BOSTON SUCKS!
I wish I had some mod points for ya' AC. You're exactly right.
Well, yes, it DOES appear that Katz is right on this occasion. The only problem is that his conclusion is painfully obvious. Sex sells. It always has, and it always will. Through good times and bad, the human libido continues.
Also, this is obvious, if sex is so successful, it means that there are a lot of buyers! Which means that online sex fills a gap, fulfils a need. In my opinion, sex is still a source of frustration for many, which comes from religion background mostly. If interest for religion continues to go down, sex will become *normal* and will no longer be associated with shame, guilt and evil. There are ethnies which live already very happily with sex and have been for centuries (ok they're not Christian, Islamic, ...).
To me, sex is not a problem at all as long as everybody is consentent. Where there is sex without unwanted violence, then there are no limits. However, I'm strongly against child porn because in probably 99% of the cases, the child is absolutely not consentent. This is why online porn is questionable... All the sites I've seen talk about lesbians, gays, ... (you name them), in short all the sex fantasies one would want to buy. But when they get into young teens they reach the limit of sexual maturity and the closer you get to it, the more unwilling the 'teens' may be.
Maybe a 'red label' (no pun intended) for quality should be put in place which guarantees that a porn site contains material with consenting actors only.
É que os desafinados também têm um coração
When did A'dam become independent?
A 1999 report by Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer of the California- based Marital and Sexuality Centre found that 75 per cent of those who enjoy adult Internet sites don't tell anyone about it.
They must mean they don't tell anyone but Alvin Cooper and Coralie R. Scherer.
Seriously though, nothing irritates me more than a researcher saying "Your numbers are wrong and mine are right because nobody will tell you the truth."
for giving Americans such a sex obsessed and sex ashamed society.
I wonder what the results of this survey in a more sexually enlightened country like Denmark or Sweden would show? There would probably be less sexual traffic, but more people admitting to it.
Sex, like drugs and voilence, is partly so attractive because it is forbidden, and yet marketed so extremely. It becomes a vice to grab Joe Sixpack into a cycle on consumption, dissatisfaction, and consumption.
#finger fridge
fridge: ooh it's cold here, come warm me up big boy!
$man microsoft
Crowded elevator smell different to midget. -Chinese Proverb
Or for a more relevant comparison: Hollywood's most successful movies get more than $100M just in US ticket sales. If that $300M is gross revenue, then 3 Hollywood successes beat the whole porn industry. It is possible, though, that porn studios average more profits than Hollywood -- they don't pay the leads $20M each, or spend $50M on special effects.
I live in Sweden. An earlier comment here said that countries like Denmark
and Sweden are more sexually "enlightened". Whether that is true or not,
I do not know.
However, a year ago or so, a swede mede a documentary film about the
pornographic movies that is shown in a swedish pay channel. In this documentary,
some clips from pornographic movies were shown. This lead to a huge debate,
and many people wanted to forbid pornography in tv. The documentary was
shown in the swedish parliament and everybody seemed very chocked;they
had offcourse never seen anything like that before!
So, what you could excpect was some law changes since "everybody" thought
this was disgusting. But what happend? Well, after the documentary was
shown in tv, the subscribers of this pay channel, where the pornographic
movies were showed, increased by 20% !! That clearly proved how it really
is. People do want porn, even if most of them don't admit it.
Now I'm from Sweden, but I'm pretty sure we aren't more of sex maniacs
then americans. The pornographic movies, for instance, were american like
99% af all pornography made...
So really, who are we trying to fool here? People want port!
The advantage/disadvantage of the Internet is the ability to be anonymous. People can express ideas that they would never express, or partake in things like online porn in the privacy of their own home (the guy at the video store doesn't even have to know)which they probably wouldn't if they could be identified. For that reason people will always partake in things like on-line sex sites or other things that might be publicly frowned upon.
I was checking out this page and noticed it said something like "26 comments". I hit refresh about 10 minutes later and it was suddenly at 82!
I hope this doesn't mean that many people want to see Katz having sex.
The more cable channels we get, the more graphic the channels seem to get (anyone see last week's Sopranos, where about half the episode took place in the strip club?). I think it's due to the increased competition. What's the best way to get someone to watch your channel instead of a "Friends" repeat? Hmmm... howzabout sex!
Part of the reason for the large amount of sexual discussion online is the fact that discussing sex, sexuality, gender roles, etc, is the fact that although humans are naturally curious about the topics (hell, none of us would be here without sex), either through shame, illogic, etc, we don't talk about it. We have shows which discuss eating on the radio and TV, but a show that talks about nothing but sex would be considered a "vulgar" thing. The internet, on the other hand, changes that. Anonymity and pseudonymity give people a chance to as those questions that "decent" people would never ask, and also, an ability to role play, to see what's on the other side of the mirror. So, it's no real surprise that there is a proliferation of sex on the internet, people are curious about it, and they are able to ask questions without having a funny stare when they start asking for the latest hermaphrodite pr0n.
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.